Grady Hendrix is about to have another movie.
Ankle Snatcher, his short story from a 2023 Amazon Original Stories Creature Feature collection, just got a director: Ben Leonberg. The guy who did Good Boy — a surprise hit and one of the more effective low budget horrors of the last couple years. Sony scooped him up to bring this Hendrix short to the screen.
The story is cut and dry simple. A man haunted by the childhood trauma of his mother’s murder, a murder that his father blamed on a boogeyman under the bed. Now grown, the man starts to suspect the boogeyman might have been real after all. The premise is honestly pure Hendrix. The domestic wound dressed up as a monster, and the monster being just as real as the wound. I may not be the largest of Hendrix fans (Grady, not Jimi), but I enjoy the imagination for sure.
No matter how you may feel about, Hendrix has been on a tear for a decade. Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, How to Sell a Haunted House, Witchcraft for Wayward Girls — all of these have been well received best-sellers. My Best Friend’s Exorcism got the Amazon adaptation treatment, which I thought presented better than the book. The guy is one of those rare horror writers who has managed to cross over to the mainstream without losing the weird (I mean, I guess he’s always leaned a little mainstream anyway). He writes books that your aunt who doesn’t read horror would read and potentially enjoy.
Leonberg feels like a smart choice for this, especially if you look at what he did with Good Boy. It leaned hard into atmosphere and building dread without needing a large budget, just craft and restraint. I think that’s exactly what a story about a boogeyman under the bed needs.
The moment you show too much too early, especially in that first act, you’re gonna lose the tension, and I personally feel like this kind of horror only works when the threat stays mostly in the shadows.
Escape Artists is producing alongside Todd Black, Jason Blumenthal, and Tony Shaw, with Hendrix and Adam Goldworm also on board through Aperture Entertainment. I think when the original creator is involved in adapting their own work, it usually works out pretty fucking well. No one is actually going to care as much about how it lands on screen, which we have seen countless times throughout the years when the author just hands it off and walks away.
I am going to be keeping my eye on this space for sure. Ankle Snatcher has potential to be solid as fuck and I say this as someone who has been consistently disappointed by boogeyman movies.
Who else do you think needs the Leonberg treatment? Which horror short story is crying out to be made into a movie?
Other than The Dummy of course…😉